Jammu, the city of temples in India, is flooded with many small urban dairies. While these farms are very important for the local communities in procuring fresh milk, these dairies are also becoming a cause of concern. The cattle dung is being flushed into the colony’s drainage system, overloading the already overloaded drainages in the area. This becomes inevitable owing to the lack of space for storing dung, even temporarily. There is a need to procure this wasted cattle dung and urine from urban dairies on payment basis and recycle them into various products.

Cattle dung can be recycled in many ways. It can be processed for bio-gas and then converted to compressed biogas (CBG) / compressed natural gas (CNG), which dairy/milk processing units may use for running their boiler plants, restaurants, running generators for electricity, lightening of streets and by other such industries on-demand basis. The remaining cattle dung and the huge quantity of slurry obtained from biogas plant can be used for making vermicompost, crematorium logs, eco–friendly lamps, paints, idols/murtis, flower pots, bio-fertilizer, cow dung cake etc. on a large scale basis which can be a commercially viable and sustainable business proposition. Moreover, collected urine can be distilled for making bio-pesticides, repellants, medicines etc.

Recycling cow dung has several benefits – enhances dairy farmers income; employment generation through green jobs; promotion of sustainable agriculture and livestock development, clean and green cities. According to an ILO study, the productive use of dung could support 2 million green and decent jobs in rural and peri-urban areas of India. The study also reports that the value of one kg of cow dung multiplies over ten times if used to its maximum uses.